Mansion tax will "quintuple-tax" £2m homeowners

Following recent support from Labour for the Liberal Democrat "mansion tax", Mark Littlewood discussed the issue.

"I'm not against in principle moving taxes away from income and onto property but I think this so called mansion tax is not by any manner or means the best way to do it," argued Mr Littlewood.

Most of those with houses worth more than two million pounds will have paid income tax, stamp duty tax and council tax and are may later pay inheritance tax. Mr Littlewood therefore argues that introducing a mansion tax means that these homeowners are "quintuple taxed".

"There are going to be some very perverse incentives here. Potentially if you own a house worth just more than two million pounds then you'll be caught but if you own six houses worth one million pounds each you won't be."

Mr Littlewood went on to argue that although a property tax makes it easier to prevent tax avoidance and evasion, it doesn't seem fair. A two million pound house will be taxed but a one million pound house with one million pounds worth of assets inside will not.

"Simply occupying a house being a taxable activy, I think is very wrong-headed. We shouldn't be doing things that are symbolic, we should be doing things which actually get the economy moving again," argued Mr Littlewood.

Regarding the idea that introducing wealth taxes will redress the balance between the rich and the poor, Mark Littlewood argued that the rich already provide a huge proportion of UK income tax revenue.

"The top one per cent of earners in the country pay about 25 per cent of all income tax, that seems to me like a heavy burden," stated Mr Littlewood.

"At what point do we actually reach the conclusion that the top one per cent or the top ten per cent are indeed paying their fair share rather than continually trying to get more and more money out of them?"